Marilyn Bohn | Creative Organizer

As a kid did you love to play a game where you would all pile on top of each other and the bottom person would be yelling, “Get off, I can’t breathe”?

Do you ever feel like the paper in your home is making it so you can’t breathe? Paper piles in homes and offices can become a heavy weight if not contained. How to organize an office is easy by following rules to breathe by:

•Do not let junk mail live in your home. Open mail over a trash (recycle) can. Do not entertain it.

•Set up a filing system with tabs on the hanging files for every kind of paper you have to keep. IE: To Read, Bills To Pay, Coupons, Receipts, Auto information, Household tips. I could go on and on but you get the idea, have a place for every piece of paper. You don’t have to file every time you touch a piece of paper. Place it in a basket and once a week file. Yes, it does take some self control but the benefits are marvelous on you and your home.

•Do you like to say, “I am a piler,”? As long as that works for you it is okay. 1) Try a vertical file rather than laying the paper down. You can label the side of the file and it is easier to see and you can organize and separate by topics or need. 2) If you want to have horizontal files place a manila folder on top of a pile (you could cut it and have two from one). Write on the top of the folder saying what the pile is. Or you can buy folders that have tabs so you can slip several piles into one folder. This keeps your desk neat and tidy and you can find what is in your pile when you need it.

What cool trick have you used to tame paper in your home?

A reader from Australia said her biggest problem in her office is knowing what to keep and what to get rid of. As I organize for women I find this is a big problem in the majority of homes. It is important to keep documents needed for taxes. Here in the U.S. we have been told that we need to keep our tax related documents for 7 years. For further information on records keeping and the real requirements visit www.irs.gov.

I recommend paying as many bills on line as possible. Banks and Credit Unions can pay most all bills electronically; you just have to set up the information for them to be able to do the transfer. Notify the utility and credit companies you want electronic bills, to discontinue sending paper bills.

When you get a paper bill put them in a hanging file labeled Bills To Pay. Decide on one or two days a month to pay bills, pull out the file and pay them. Because they are contained you don’t have to wonder where you put the bill. If you absolutely must, only keep one past months paid bill at any given time. After paying a bill you can shred or recycle the paper.

I recommend this as a way to keep a home office organized as it does away with tons of paper. If you can verify two different ways that you paid the bill there is no reason for you to keep the paper.

•One way to verify is with the new monthly bill it will show you paid the previous month.

•You will have record of how you paid it—credit card, debit card, check, or electronically.

If you absolutely can’t let go of the paid bill instead of keeping clutter around I recommend a wonderful scanning device called Neat Receipts. It scans receipts, business cards and documents of any size. It reads and converts scan to editable text then it identifies and digitally files your papers for easy access and you can quickly access them when you need them. Check out www.neatreceipts.com

To have an organized office we need a system of dealing with all the paper work and other things that make their way into our offices. Start organizing from the inside out. If you have drawers, containers, a cupboard or closet that you use for your pens, paper, stapler, hole punch and other necessary office supplies start organizing there. Even if your desk is a mess, remember it will get worse during the organizing phase before it gets better. But it will get better.

The reason to start in the drawers, container or cupboards is:
•You will know how much space you have available to put the things away that are out on your desk.
•You can de-junk a lot of things that have been hidden in your drawers or in the closet thus creating more space.
•You won’t be wasting time putting things away into these places from other parts of your office only to have to go back and organize those spaces when your desk is unburied.

I was organizing the office of a woman who has a successful business and we started in her desk drawer. That had been the catch all for everything she didn’t know what to do with. (Actually going back six years). Her drawers were unusable to her. Things had been just stuck in the drawers—out of mind out of site. When we were done she even had one drawer that was empty. Before we started every drawer had been chuck full of ‘stuff’.

What is the most unique, fun, or great find that you have uncovered in your office?

Too much of a good thing is wonderful. The first time I read this I laughed and thought isn’t that the truth. But as I organize for women and seniors that is not necessarily true. Just like with anything else excess can lead to other problems. I think too much chocolate or licorice is a good thing but then when there is too much on my hips it isn’t such a good thing.
Too much of a good thing can become clutter. I chuckled at a cartoon with two seniors talking to each other and he was mystified by her buying a wedding dress. She said, “But it was on sale”. Just because something is on sale does not make it a bargain for us if we:

•Don’t need it
•Don’t have a use for it
•Don’t absolutely love it
•Don’t have a place it

If we can say yes to three out of four of these then it is a bargain. (Yes, we need it, we have a use for it, we love it and we have a place for it). I know, there are days we just have to buy it no matter what and it ends up as clutter or we donate it to charity.

I would be rich if I had resisted buying too much of a good thing in my life and the stuff ended up being donated, recycled or thrown away. But we all live and learn.

What have you bought that you later donated or (heaven forbid) allowed to live with you and it became clutter? What would you have done different?

I had so much fun Friday morning. I came home from walking and decided to organize my little pantry. What an eye opener this was. It was already organized, but with a little tweaking it is even better. I know in a few months it will need tweaking again. That is a good thing as it reminds me what I have. As a professional organizer I am always organizing kitchens for other women and it was fun to follow my own advise as I took everything out and then put it all back together–only better.

One thing I did that I haven’t done before with this cupboard was to make a list of everything that is on each shelf. The contents at the back of the lower shelves can’t be seen when I’m not down on the floor looking for something. I found cereal and pie filling I didn’t know I had. Now my list is taped inside the cupboard at eye level and I will know what I have. As I use things I will cross them off. I’ll let you know how that theory works. (It is a good theory).

I then moved on to my other cupboards, fridge and lastly I cleaned my stove top. I didn’t have a lot of things out of place or that I had to get rid of but by putting some things in different places and using containers for a few things I made the whole kitchen look better and I feel so good about it. I want to just go and open cupboards and look at how nice they look. (Isn’t that silly?)

One thing I did find that didn’t belong was a quart size bottle that vitamins had come in and my daughter had saved for over three years. I took the label off and gave it to her so she can buy those vitamins if she ever wants them again. She agreed this was a better solution; the bottle did not need to live on a shelf.

What surprises have you found when organizing your cupboards?

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